DAKSTERS VS Berlina

[DAKSTER]

OK I have finally started work on the Berlina, months after the 4 week deadline I gave myself to have it finished !!

Health and poverty have been holding me back, but now its all happening



Starting point is a VS Berlina, 96 Series 1. It has all the options except for wood and leather. It even has bonnet and headlight protectors and a drivers weathershield... dead straight and rust free.

It's a 3.8 Ecotec, running on factory fitted dual fuel, with a 4 spd auto. 230,000k on the clock.

Bought the car on ebay from Sydney for $2700, add a plane ticket from Brissy for $59 and its mine. The guy picked me up from the airport, too easy.


A night at a friends place, then off to Savage Fibreglass for a bonnet in the morning. They were great. The VS monaro bonnet, all fibreglass, was $600 and the quality is awesome.

Note: As much as I like the guys work, bottom line is I didn't even ask if it was legal. Turns out it isn't. The only fibreglass bonnets that have ADR compliance are made by blitsbodykits.com.au in Southport, QLD.

Picked up the car after the bonnet was fitted. He waxed it up for me since it was unpainted, just to stop any oil or whatever getting into the Gelcoat before it got painted.

 

[DAKSTER]

Drove it to Melbourne the same day, and stayed the night at a friends. Next morning, off to XXX bodykits in Dandenong to get a VXR8 kit fitted. I chose these guys on ebay, basically because the kit was what I wanted, it was cheap ($1200 fitted and primed), and I wanted to take a cruise to Melbourne lol..

There were lessons to be learned here. On the phone, the guy was so helpful. He convinced me that the fibreglass would be a perfect fit, especially as he was making it over the couple days before I got there and it would still be 'fresh and flexible' which was going to make a perfect fit possible.

This is BS !!! The fit was terrible, I had 15mm overlaps into the guards, and the whole thing was soooo flimsy. You get what you pay for.. he tried to say the car was accident damaged lol... but inspecting the back yard where the other cars he had done were, not one of them were decent quality.

There's good and bad here. I did save a lot of money by buying from this guy, and I got the exact kit I wanted. I've just had to spend a lot of time and several hundred bucks in glass and resin making the kit fit properly and strengthening it. Since I am confident with fibreglass this wasn't an issue and I think I came out in front. If you need a kit that is well made and fits properly though, XXX are NOT the place to go. Pay the extra and go somewhere else...

 

[DAKSTER]

OK so I have the kit fitted, I cruised up to Quilpie, in the Opal fields of SW QLD. Got a great m8 there, so I figured I would go to his place, spend a week and spray the car. I hit a roo 200km from Quilpie which smashed the front bar and foglights and clipped the back on the way through.

This exposed the crap quality of XXX bodykits even more. Inside the Gelcoat in many places was completely dry fibreglass.. no resin at all..

Spent a week fixing the damage and priming the car. It was 45C and the primer was drying before it hit the car. Put 8 litres of hi fill primer on mostly at night, and left a week later in a grey car with a sandpaper texture lol.

Only 900k from there back to home.. 200k to go I hit a fox and smash the front bar again...

 

[DAKSTER]

I've only partially repaired the fox damage, I'll get back to that

The benefit of buying a car then driving it 4000km is by the time you get home, you know everything about it.

Faults I found with this car...

The Climate control wasn't working properly. Every time I went up a hill it switched to blowing on my feet. Sometimes a good thump on the side of the console would make it come back to the dash outlets.. or sometimes it would take days to just fix itself. Very annoying. What was even more annoying was that if I started the car with the AC on, I blew a fuse and the fan blower would stay on, even with the keys out and the car locked. To stop the blower, it was necessary to remove the main breaker under the bonnet.. absolute pain in the rear.

To fix it, the sparkies replaced some control module under the plastic shroud that hides the wiper motor, and replaced a solenoid or something in the dash.
$400.

The gauges were a bit dicky.. had to hit the top of the dash sometimes to make the temp gauge and fuel gauge move. Fixed that by removing the circuit board and resoldering everything.


The lights were crap. I kept hitting animals lol.

Thats it. There is nothing else wrong with this car.

 

[DAKSTER]

I am over painting for now, so its time for some other goodies. Obvious start is lights.
I'm thinking best of the best, and trying my hardest to achieve that. I picked up some modern crystal style lights to suit the car, with matching indicators. I really like these, and the lenses are glass - I hate those polycarbonate things and the way they oxidise.

Since I like to be seen as well, I got some Altezza lights for the rear. I don't particularly like them, but I think the original lenses are just too dim. I will never understand why people want to tint something that is already too dark. I'd prefer the anti altezza people to hate my tail lights than have them rear end me because they couldn't see the originals. When I find something that looks better but is just as bright and visible, I will buy it.

 

[DAKSTER]

Now its time to get into forbidden HID territory

Didnt do my research, and didnt even know HIDs were illegal. I just knew they were very bright and used less power. I have bad eyes, I need good lights.

I went to the shop and bought the ones recommended to me. They didnt tell me they were illegal either.. they also sold me the lights (at the same time, with the altezzas), they knew I didnt have projectors.

8000k H4s and 10000k H1s. First mistake.. dont listen to the saleman.

Now if you are considering HIDs, I've learnt a lot, and I hope this is helpful.

They are certainly very bright, though there are lots of downsides. The first of course is that unless you have a car with projector lamps, self levelling suspension, and headlight wipers, HIDs are illegal.

If you must have HIDs.. higher number means bluer it does NOT mean brighter. 4300k or 5000k will get you the best light.

Its not as simple as that either. HID lamps have a different focal length than H4... the light source is in a different physical place within the light. This means that a reflector which is designed to focus the light from a H4 globe in a particular way is not capable of focusing the light from a HID in the same way, because the light source is in a different place.

It throws some light in the wrong direction, which is why HIDs get such a bad rap from other motorists.. its throwing it straight into their eyes. You can compensate for this to some degree by adjusting your lights further to the left and lower than normal. This will stop you from bothering other motorists, but you will lose a lot of the advantage of having them in the first place, because they arent aimed right!

They are still better than standard lights though, even adjusted like this.

I removed the 8000k 35w HID/H4 and replaced them with Philips Extreme Vision H4s. I've left the 10000k HIDs in the high beam for now, but when I get a Round Tuit, I will buy 5000k 55w HID for the high beam.

Since I dont need high beam around town, I was able to readjust my lights again, and the philips globes are great.. and legal..

This is what they look like now.

When I hit the open road, the HIDs now correctly adjusted in the high beam are awesome. They still throw some light in the wrong direction but if I blind a couple kangaroos I am not going to cry. I am careful about dipping my lights early though, I wouldnt like those things pointing at me. Looking forward to getting the 5000k 55w HID , that will be spectacular.

EDIT: I never bought any more HID's in the end, I simply bought Extreme 100+ for the high beam as well. Absolutely the best lights you have have in a VS IMO, these lights with the philips globes.

 

[DAKSTER]

I havent totally fixed the fox damage yet, but it wasnt too serious, and I only have a bit more to do on it so I will leave it till I get to that panel with the paint.

I've decided on the paint. Its going to be an acrylic pearl, and will look similar to this randomly googled unidentified object.

My white is much whiter, and the pearl will be an emerald green, but much less of it than the green on that object.

 

[DAKSTER]

Acrylic Pearl.

First.. lots of hi fill primer. Then some more. Pearl will show every blemish on the body, the prep needs to be perfect, and flat as. Its got 8 litres of primer on it already.. tick that box.

Next.. a base coat. In my case, its untinted Spartan Acrylic White. Again, this needs to be dead flat, so I am giving it 4 coats, and rubbing each coat back with wet 600 grit.

When all the white is applied, a couple wet coats of clear.. wait for it to flash over.. add 10g/l Emerald Green pearl flakes and give it a couple wet coats, then a couple dry coats. Let it flash over and then a few wet coats of clear over the top. Wait a couple weeks and buff it up.

I like to do the base coat one panel at a time. As I spray and rub, spray and rub, I can discover and fix every tiny blemish. Its easy to miss stuff if you are trying to cover a whole car at once.

I've started with the rear. The spoiler first.. 4 coats, blocked flat between each coat. Geez that white is bright..

Then the boot..

 

[DAKSTER]

The car has a towbar, which was removed when the body kit was installed. I want it back, so the rear bar needs a hole for the towing tongue. I guess I could have just cut a slot, but everything about this kit has needed reinforcing and the rear bar is no different. And of course, because the towing tongue isn't straight it was really hard to tell where the slot would need to be.

I decided to make a more interesting hole than just a slot, and use it as part of the reinforcing that will be done. First, I've cut a hole in the bar. I did it with the bar on the car, just cutting a little deeper each time and trying the towbar for fit. Once the towbar fit, I knew when to stop.

I saved a piece of the offcut, just for the shape. Then I glued it to a metal strap with resin.

Then I glued the strap to the bar, using resin again.

Now I have something to build on. I added a second strap on the inside front edge on this photo, but forgot to take a pic. I have laid fibreglass mat over all of the metal straps, and covered the gaps with mat, all from the inside of the bar. Then using fibreglass reinforced bodyfiller, I've done some shaping to make it look so much nicer than just a hole. Of course, its not finished yet

 

[DAKSTER]

Just a little smoothing up to do. Doing a final check on the fit.

Pretty happy with it, so its just clean it up and its ready to go.

The factory wiring plug is a flat one and screws directly to the bottom of the bar. Its very low profile and unobtrusive. I'll be adding extra reinforcement where it screws in. I'd considered adding a standard round 7 pin plug too, but I don't think it would look great, so just going to carry an adapter in the boot

There are a couple of other minor repairs to be made on the bar, gravel rash goes right through the thin stuff this kit is made of, and I have actually bottomed out one of the rear corners a couple times on a tight downhill turn out at the farm Got to repair those and add a couple kilos of fibreglass to the whole bar, but that won't take more than a day or two. Then it can go back on the car and get white base coat.